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Current Events

The TAOnline Current Events section will keep you up-to-date on the most recent
transitioning military career related happenings. This section is updated bi-weekly,
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Alex Masick lives in Virginia but was in the Dayton area Thursday hunting for
job leads.

The future military spouse plans to marry his Air Force fiancee, a second lieutenant
assigned to the 711th Human Performance Wing at Wright-Patterson, and wants to move
here with a job in hand to be with her.

"It's very challenging to communicate remotely with an employer because you don't
want to mess up your first impression," said Masick, 32, of Falls Church, Va., and
who has experience in sales and training. "I spent hours agonizing over the phrasing
of an introduction email to make sure someone just doesn't click delete within the
first couple of seconds."

Military spouses often face not only higher rates of unemployment but underemployment,
one study found, as they search for a job when their husband or wife in uniform
is transferred to a new and different base every few years.

"They quite often will come to somewhere that the job opportunities are quite limited
and companies find it difficult to see the value of somebody who's only going to
be here for a couple of years," said Gillian Russell, a U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Foundation associate with the Hiring Our Heroes program, which connects employers
with military job seekers and their spouses.

In a 2013 review, the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University
found 90 percent of female spouses of active-duty service members reported they
were underemployed, or had more education and experience than the jobs they had
required.

"That was the biggest finding and probably gave a broader picture of the employment
situation of a military spouse," said Rosalinda Maury, IVMF director of applied
research and analytics. "It's not just unemployment, it's underemployment."

The analysis, conducted with the Military Officers Association of America, cited
2012 American Community Survey data that showed military spouses earned 38 percent
less on average and were 30 percent more likely to be unemployed compared to their
civilian counterparts.

Courtney R. Taylor, 26, who is married to an Air Force staff sergeant at Wright-Patterson,
knows the difficulty of a civilian job search in a new community.

She's searched for weeks, hoping to find a job in financial management that would
coincide with her studies at Wright State University.

"It's very, very difficult," she said. "... I haven't been able to find a job. I'm
just trying to get my foot in the door somewhere and it's a little difficult to
find that opportunity."

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation's Hiring Our Heroes initiative held a job
fair Thursday at Wright-Patt. Some 50 companies and agencies were represented —
from Starbucks to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.

The goal is to show employers the skills spouses can bring to the workplace, Russell
said. "They might not be working, they might have flaws in their resume, but what
they are doing is they are volunteering, they are helping to run the bases, they're
helping to make sure that families are looked after while service members are away,
and all of these skills make them absolutely fantastic employees.

"We work with our national sponsors and local partners to make sure that those military
spouses are being recognized and they're getting meaningful jobs," she said.

Chris Phillips, a PNC Bank diversity specialist who recruits military spouses, said
they have organizational and leadership skills useful to employers.

"It's not just the veteran, it's the spouse," she said. "They're the caregiver,
they're the ones that manage the household so they've very loyal to an employer
and it makes good business sense to us."

Explaining gaps in work history to employers and finding a job in their career field
are the most common complaints from military spouses, said Shonte Gonzalez, an Airmen
and Family Readiness Center community readiness specialist who counsels job-hunting
spouses at Wright-Patterson. The center offers tips on resumes and preps spouses
with mock job interviews.

"Their gaps in employment are probably one of the biggest things that are stressful
to them," Gonzalez said. Many Dayton area employers understand the work history
gaps that may accompany military life as a spouse, Gonzalez said.

Unemployed spouses can boost their resume by stressing their volunteer work, she
said.

"It's not paid, but it's a job," Gonzalez said. "People like to see that people
are busy.

"We encourage them to volunteer," she added. "We try to get them out in the market
because the only way you're going to meet people is to network."

Kendra Mustain, a recruiting coordinator at Comfort Keepers, a business that offers
home care to the elderly, said she's a former military spouse who understands the
challenge of moving frequently.

"I personally think that military spouses would make excellent caregivers because
they are by nature supportive people," she said.